Polymarket: When Gamblers Threaten Journalists. Imagine a State Actor With Billions on the Line

Crazy story.

A Times of Israel military correspondent, Emanuel Fabian, reported on an Iranian ballistic missile strike near Beit Shemesh on March 10, 2026. What followed was a disturbing escalation of harassment and death threats from Polymarket gamblers.

A man named "Haim" sent a series of threatening WhatsApp messages, warning Fabian he had minutes to comply or face severe consequences, including: "after you make us lose $900,000 we will invest no less than that to finish you." Someone posing as a lawyer also called him.

Fabian refused to alter his reporting. Less ethical or concerned journalists might cave under similar pressure.

Now, imagine what a state actor could do with virtually unlimited resources, intelligence agencies, and billions of dollars on the line. The manipulation of journalists, fabrication of evidence, and intimidation of sources would not just be a crime. It would become an instrument of foreign policy. Or worse, a state could skip the manipulation entirely and simply take actions to move the market in their favor. Even starting a war.

Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don't rewrite an Iran missile story | The Times of Israel

 

I get what you’re saying about trusting the system, but I think this example actually shows why that’s risky.

Your car analogy works because driving is heavily regulated. Licenses, insurance, enforcement, liability, those are what keep bad behavior rare. Without that structure, you wouldn’t just “trust drivers” to do the right thing.

What’s interesting is prediction markets are already following the same path. The U.S. side is now regulated under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, with ID checks and reporting. That actually supports the point, the incentives got exploited first, and then regulation followed, just like with the US SEC.

But that doesn’t solve the core issue. There’s still a global, more opaque version where actors can operate with far fewer constraints. That’s where the real risk sits.

And on the journalist, him going public likely made him safer, it doesn’t mean the system prevented the threat. It happened, and he had to react.

The bigger difference here is the downside. Fraud and insider trading mostly hurt people financially. This kind of setup can incentivize influencing real-world events, even conflicts. That’s a much higher ceiling for harm.

So I agree it’s not everywhere, but if the system rewards people for trying to influence outcomes, then the risk is built in. It doesn’t need to be everywhere all at once.

 

There are actually a number of bills targeting prediction markets to address abuse and fraud, including insider trading, manipulation, and underage gambling. Some go further and target bets tied to sensitive geopolitical events, like war, assassination, and death, due to concerns about national security and incentives to influence real-world outcomes. Others aim to prohibit trading by elected officials, including POTUS, because of access to nonpublic information...

Congress Introduces Wave of Bills Targeting Prediction Markets - DeFi Rate

 

Gambling is a deeply damaging addiction that doesn't get nearly enough honest conversation. I've witnessed everyday family folks lose everything to it, and even the "mild" cases are heartbreaking: slowly bleeding money every month, surviving but never really living, while their families suffer around them. Divorce, dysfunction, broken trust. It rivals drug addiction in real-world destruction. Prediction markets are just the latest rebranding of the same trap, dressed up as information and analysis. We're moving in the wrong direction, expanding access and normalizing it everywhere instead of reducing the harm.

 

Rep. Seth Moulton rips Polymarket for taking bets on fate of US pilot shot down over Iran

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) on Friday ripped the prediction platform Polymarket for accepting bets in a since-deleted page on the date a U.S. pilot shot down over Iran will be found.

“They could be your neighbor, a friend, a family member,” Moulton wrote in a post Friday on the social platform X. “And people are betting on whether or not they’ll be saved.”

“This is DISGUSTING,” he wrote.

Polymarket has since taken down the poll for not meeting its standards.

“We took this market down immediately as it does not meet our integrity standards,” the company in a statement on X. “It should not have been posted, and we are investigating how this slipped through our internal safeguards.”

Moulton and other bipartisan lawmakers have been critical of prediction markets like Polymarket. He recently banned his staff from trading on such platforms.

“Prediction markets have become a playground for corrupt insiders who are able to place bets on things like election outcomes, wars, and even the deaths of public figures,” Moulton said in a statement on his decision. “This is creating a perverse incentive structure that poses a genuine threat to American society today.”

 

Who's investigating?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/18/iran-war-bets-ethics-concerns

Perfect timing
On the night of 27 February, the day before the US and Israel would carry out strikes on Iran, an unusual influx of about 150 accounts on Polymarket placed bets that the US would strike Iran the next day. A New York Times analysis found the bets totaled $855,000, with 16 accounts pocketing more than $100,000 each.

Soon after, a single anonymous Polymarket user, under an account named “Magamyman”, made over $553,000 after betting that Khamenei would be “removed” from power just moments before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike, according to a complaint filed to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that regulates futures markets, by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. The complaint also cites a crypto-analytics firm that identified six “suspected insiders” who made a total of $1.2m on Polymarket after Khamenei was killed.


The well-timed surge of wagers were seen again on 7 April, when at least 50 Polymarket accounts placed bets that the US and Iran would reach a ceasefire hours before Trump would announce it on a Truth Social post. Earlier, the president had said “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not open the strait of Hormuz.

But traders weren’t just active on Polymarket: there were similar surges of oil futures trading activity just hours before Trump announced updates to the conflict that would lower oil prices.

On 23 March, traders placed $580m in bets on the oil futures market just 15 minutes before Trump said on social media that the US was having “productive” talks with Iran, according to the Financial Times. The traders made a windfall after Trump’s comments triggered a sell-off in the oil markets that made oil prices plummet.

The same thing happened again on 7 April, this time when traders spent $950m on oil futures, betting that the price of oil would fall just hours before the ceasefire with Iran was announced.

 

The CFTC and SEC have the power to investigate and regulate. Congress is secondary, investigating the investigators, ensuring they are doing their job, or conducting their own investigations as well.

The issue is that both the CFTC and SEC have been weakened under the Trump admin and are run by Trump loyalists. The SEC's top enforcement official resigned after clashing with agency leadership (for refusing to pursuit fraud cases involving Trump allies), and the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section (created after Watergate to prosecute corrupt officials) has been reduced from 36 lawyers to just two.

So, I'm not expecting the CFTC, SEC, or DOJ to do anything here. In fact, I would not be surprised at all if folks around Trump are the inside traders, and these agencies wouldn't investigate themselves. The same goes for today's Congress, they wouldn't dare investigate this admin.

There is essentially no check on public corruption, and it is clear as daylight that corruption is ongoing.


The Justice Department Had 36 Lawyers Fighting Corruption Full-Time. Under Trump, It’s Down to Two. - NOTUS — News of the United States

New Trick, Same Crime? Insider Trading on Prediction Markets - King & Spalding

Exclusive: US SEC's ex-enforcement chief clashed with bosses over Trump cases before leaving, sources say | Reuters